Imagining gender equality in the fantasy world

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Play ‘Find the Girls on the Cereal Box’ featuring…Captain Crunch!

Today, we had Captain Crunch with crunch berries for breakfast. (Not the healthiest choice, I know, blaming my husband who loved the “food” as a kid.) There are no female mascots on children’s cereal. That’s right, zero. You may not think that’s a big deal but it’s one more space in kidworld where girls go missing. Children spend hours studying these cereal boxes and playing the games on them. They’re like newspapers for children, and just like newspapers for adults, males dominate the stories. What if there were no male mascots on children’s cereal? Do you think anyone would notice that?

A while back, in an effort to help my kids learn not to take missing females for granted, as something expected and normal, we invented a new game: Find the Girls on the Cereal Box. It’s actually fun because it’s challenging, and you can have some great discussions about what makes a boy a boy and a girl a girl, according to cereal box creators.

Try it yourself. Here’s my 5 year old daughter with the back of a box of Captain Crunch.

The answer is: 4 girls and 9 boys including Captain Crunch on this box. The photo is not great, and details are key so don’t be too hard on yourself if you got it wrong.

Here’s a close up of the girls we found.

Girl #1 is a girl because her hair is pink, has long curls, and she has eyelashes.

5 thoughts on “Play ‘Find the Girls on the Cereal Box’ featuring…Captain Crunch!”

I’m pretty sure ‘Cool Blue’, the Malt-O-Meal cereal mascot, is a girl. No bow or exaggerated eyelashes, the only indicator is her pouch. Although I think they may have phased her off of current packaging…

I distinctly remember the first time I realized that BOYS have eyelashes too–my dad picked me up so that I was closer to his face and I was shocked when I noticed them. I was probably about 6, and that was decades ago. How little things change.

I have to give you some credit, you were able to use a computer, even with the amount of brain damage you possess.
Sadly, what you’ve typed lacks any evidence of intelligence. Before you become too enraged and accuse me of sexually harassing you, I’d like to share that I am a woman as well. You are the type of hypocritical “feminist” that gives real feminists a bad name. It’s absolutely disgusting. You have the ridiculous mentality that feminism translates to “Hurr durr, bois r bad and feminism means that gurls r better.” This is why nobody takes feminism seriously. You claim to be an advocate for equality but get upset if girls aren’t portrayed as the superior gender. Equality means that everyone is EQUAL. No gender is superior or inferior. Period.